Saturday 3 February 2024

Walking Through the Fire

Walking Through the Fire.... in collaboration with Sultans of String and the Cathedral Bluffs Symphony Orchestra. What a great concert yesterday.... loved every minute of it.

A very unusual and effective combination of a 50 piece symphony orchestra, the Sultans' lively international music, and the music of the First Nations people of this country.


Alyssa Delbaere-Sawchuck. She can sing, play the fiddle and step dance at the same time.

Monday 1 January 2024

2023 Books

 The list of books read during 2023.... as usual Canadian authors shown in RED, British authors in BLUE, American authors in GREEN.

JANUARY
The Gift of Rain - Tan Twan Eng
Mothers and Sons - Colm Toibin
Finding Edward - Sheila Murray
Sea of Tranquillity - Emily St.John Mandel

FEBRUARY
Utopia - Heidi Sopinka (DNF - got as far as page 3)
Make Ink, a Forager's Guide to Natural Inkmaking - Jason Logan
Ducks, Two Years in the Oil Sands - Kate Beaton (graphic novel, well worth reading!)
The Glass Hotel - Emily St.John Mandel

MARCH
The Hungry Ghosts - Shyam Selvadurai
Uncertain Kin - Janice Lynn Mather
When We Lost Our Heads - Heather O'Neill (DNF)
Mouth to Mouth - Antoine Wilson
Beyond Black - Hilary Mantel

APRIL
The Mystery of Right and Wrong - Wayne Johnstone
The Maid - Nita Prose

MAY
Fayne - Mary Anne MacDonald
An Astronaut's Guide to Life on Earth - Chris Hadfield
Station Eleven - Emily St.John Mandel

JUNE
Spare - Prince Harry
The Finder - Will Ferguson
Miss Benson's Beetle - Rachel Joyce
First Snow, Last Light - Wayne Johnstone
Making Handmade Books - Alisa Godden

JULY
The Lindbergh Nanny - Mariah Fredericks
Custodian of Paradise - Wayne Johnstone
The Trouble with Goats and Sheep - Joanna Cannon
Queen's Gambit - Elizabeth Freemantle

AUGUST
The Art Thief - Noah Charney
A Tidy Ending - Joanna Cannon
Three Things about Elsie - Joanna Cannon
Don't Tell Me You're Afraid - Giuseppe Catozzella

SEPTEMBER
Cloud Atlas - David Mitchell 
Shrines of Gaiety - Kate Atkinson
The Juggler's Children - Carolyn Abraham
Big Sky - Kate Atkinson
The Lake House - Kate Morton (DNF - just didn't grab my imagination)

OCTOBER
Cooking for Picasso - Camille Aubray
The Second History - Rebecca Silver Slayter (DNF - not my sort of book)
11/22/63 - Stephen King
Human Croquet - Kate Atkinson

NOVEMBER
The Handmaid's Tale - Margaret Atwood
Alias Grace - Margaret Atwood
Diamond Eye - Kate Quinn

DECEMBER
The Lighthouse Keeper's Daughter - Hazel Gaynor
The Rose Code - Kate Quinn
After the Bloom - Leslie Shimotakahara

Currently reading: Moral Disorder - Margaret Atwood

Monday 20 November 2023

Breugel-Boche Bus 2

 Some details of the Breugel-Boche bus....




There's a video about this marvellous bus, please have a look ----

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CQdOu0kqswE


Saturday 18 November 2023

Breugel-Boche Bus

The Bruegel-Boche Bus.... an amazing mindboggling piece of art displayed in it's own room at the Art Gallery of Hamilton, Ontario.  The artist started with an old 1960 VW bus, just like the one I had many years ago, and started elaborating on it.  He started in 1996 and the construction is still continuing. 

It's a marveroolus (love that new word, I just made it up by accident) piece of imagination. The bus appears to pull a post-industrial universe displaying a cornucopia of fantastic and seductive worlds, and I wonder if it will ever be finished!



More photos to come......

Thursday 16 November 2023

The Big Bad City

I hardly ever get to go to big bad Downtown Toronto any more, and I certainly NEVER drive there. I can take a bus or train very cheaply and with far less mental stress.  But it's good to have a wander around the city once in a while.... so that's what I did when I went to see SIX - The Musical.  Too bad it was such a grey day.




Tuesday 14 November 2023

SIX

 SIX... The Musical.  You would think that it would be difficult task to compose a musical entertainment about King Henry VIII's six wives. After all, it was a sad story for most of them. Divorced, beheaded, died, divorced, beheaded, survived. It was a short musical as musicals go.... only 80 minutes with no intermission... but the six wives sang and danced and were absolutely marvellous and full of delicious energy for the whole show.  I loved it!



The Royal Alexandra Theatre, commonly known as the Royal Alex, is an historic performing arts theatre located at 260 King Street West, in the downtown Toronto Entertainment District. There are 1,244 seats across three levels. Built in 1907, it's the oldest continuously operating legitimate theatre in North America.

Sunday 12 November 2023

Halifax Harbour

It was a grey day but no rain when I wandered along the Halifax waterfront.  The last time I was here was in 2000, the year that the Tall Ships Festival came to Halifax, and the waterfront was very different then, with tall ships from all over the world tied up at it's wharves.


Halifax Harbour is a large natural harbour on the Atlantic coast of Nova Scotia, Canada, located in the Halifax Regional Municipality. Halifax largely owes its existence to the harbour, being one of the largest and deepest ice-free natural harbours in the world.